#37: Scavenger (1985)

Poor Scavenger. I always feel sorry for the guy. His Tech Spec bio is really sad in a way, painting as it does a picture of a guy that no one likes, or sees any worth in. Yet, as the right arm of Devastator, he could punch your head clean of your body and deposit it in, say, Brazil. But the sad truth is, even his own team mates can't bear the guy. You have to have pity for someone like that.

Scavenger and the Constructicons debuted in the Transformers cartoon in the first season, presumably having been built by Megatron. (Later on, they would supposedly have built Megatron whilst also having been brainwashed by himself, but they're other stories for other times) Their main enemies were the Dinobots, who don't combine and never will, ok? Ok. The Constructicons DID combine though, which was their main gimmick. This resulted in two things. 1. the toys suffered from the gimmick 2. the characters suffered from the gimmick. Basically, neither the toys were much cop, and the characters were never explored fully, because their combining was what made toy sales. Sad but true. So even though the Constructicons had disparate personalities, in the cartoon at least, not much was made of it. Which missed the point a little bit, certainly with the 'character' (if it can be said that he even had one) of Devastator.

As for poor Scavenger, he got lost in the mayhem of toys to be sold. I always did like his Tech Spec bio though, and imagined him to be almost a giant puppy, always bringing back worthless items and getting reprimanded for it by Megatron and Scrapper. Like I said, poor guy. One day I'll get round to writing his story. Although not for IDW. It might be a smidge late for that.

Scavenger's toy alt mode was a more than servicable excavator (not digger, apparently. I'm not sure what the difference is there, but there is one, I'm told), but the robot mode does suffer from combiner syndrome, i.e. it's exceedingly simple and almopst perfunctory. That said, for the Constructicons, it's a good robot mode, and probably the reason why Scavenger's my favourite of the bunch.

Scavenger is my favourite Constructicon. Why? Well, because he's the underdog. He's the guy that gets picked on all the time, and I always hated that in any form. I guess being a guy that got picked on all the time at school made me always root for the little guy. Even if the little guy is a 20 foot tall robot who transforms into a construction vehicle.